Judge In US Copyright Group Case Seems Skeptical Of Lumping All Those Lawsuits Into One

from the convince-me dept

Following the filing from the EFF, Public Citizen and the ACLU questioning US Copyright Group's (really law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver) decision to lump together thousands upon thousands of copyright infringement lawsuits into a single lawsuit, it sounds like the judge in the case is quite skeptical of the strategy. She's demanding that US Copyright Group explain in writing why she shouldn't throw out all but one of the John Doe defendants for "misjoinder."

A brief entry in the official court docket lays out the order. "MINUTE ORDER requiring Plaintiff to show cause in writing no later than June 21, 2010 why Doe Defendants 2 through 2000 should not be dismissed for misjoinder under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20," wrote the judge in The Steam Experiment case. The same order was repeated in a separate case targeting 4,577 users alleged to have shared the film Far Cry.

Considering that USCG has been making the argument that ISPs who don't hand over the names of the accused are guilty of inducing infringement, I can't wait to see the legal response. In the meantime, though, it's good that the judge appears to be aware that this strategy is highly questionable.

Hurt Locker Hypocracy

Strange that the Hurt Locker people are being sued by the person on whom the movie was based on. Apparently he wasn't paid anything for his story. So he sued them in a Delaware court and now the defendants are telling the court that none of them live in Delaware and the suit should be moved to California where they live.

It seems though that they have no problem suing people in DC where practically none of their down loaders live.